Argumentative competence as main goal in educational contexts: Literature review

Abstract

The aim of this article is to identify the status of research on argumentative competence in the scientific literature in the field of education. The corpus comprised seventy-three investigations located in six databases. All of the studies were related to the training of students in the ability to argue, either orally or written, in virtual, mixed and face-to-face scenarios in different areas of knowledge. The analysis took into account the year in which the research was performed, the type of publication, the educational level at which it was carried out, the educational activity or situation, the type of analysis reported and the area of knowledge. The studies were carried out from 2000 to 2016, with a larger number published after 2012. Most of the texts were articles (88%) that focused on written argumentation (43%) and used qualitative analysis to evaluate the arguments (45%) in higher education (50%), mostly in the humanities and behavioral sciences (24%) with a minimal presence in the fields of engineering, medicine, or physics and mathematics. The analysis points to the need to implement the reported findings in different areas of knowledge, as well as the importance of identifying the possibilities of developing argumentative competence at earlier educational levels and forms of formative assessment of this capacity to take advantage of the potential of ICTs.